Gwendolen (12 page)

‘Do you hear that?' Sir Hugo asked him, cautiously encouraging the banter.

‘Yes,' said Grandcourt with a warning look to me. ‘It is a deucedly hard thing to keep up though.'

Sir Hugo only half thought it a tease and I did not want to hear the truth spoken. I made light of my bitterness and contempt but you had more than glimpsed into the casket where the serpent writhed over my diamonds. You turned your attention to the other ladies and kept out of my way.

*

We walked the gravel paths; snow had massed on the boughs of a great cedar. The stables were formed from what once was the Abbey's choir. The exterior brick wall was covered with ivy, but inside, each finely arched chapel had been turned into a stall for beautiful sleek brown and grey horses. The original stained-glass windows were crimson, orange, blue and palest violet and there were four carved angels below the grand pointed roof, but the rest of the choir had been levelled, paved and drained in modern fashion. Hay hung from racks where saints once looked down from altarpieces; a little white-and-liver-coloured spaniel had made his bed in the back of an old hackney carriage. I cried out, ‘Why this is glorious! I wish there were a horse in every box. I would ten times rather have these stables than those at Diplow,' then blushed with shame at such a blunder.

‘Now we are going to see the cloister,' Sir Hugo said. ‘It's the finest bit of all, in perfect preservation. The monks might have been walking there yesterday.'

My odious husband came to my side. ‘You had better take my arm,' he commanded. I took it. I did not now speak to him unless he addressed me or some practicality needed to be arranged. ‘It's a great bore being dragged about in this way and no cigar,' he said.

‘I thought you'd like it.'

‘Like it? Eternal chatter. And these ugly girls – inviting one to meet such monsters. That hideous Mrs Lewes, and how that fat Deronda can bear looking at that Miss Fenn …'

‘Why do you call him fat? Do you object to him so much?'

‘Object? No. What do I care about his being fat. I'll invite him to Diplow again if you like.'

‘I don't think he'd come. He's too learned and clever to care about us.'

‘That makes no difference. Either he is a gentleman or he is not.'

In all Grandcourt said I was warned; mild rebuke was punishment deferred. Irritation with me transmuted to violence against me.

We moved to the cloistered court. You explained the arched and pillared openings, the delicately wrought foliage on the capitals. You said as a boy the carving on these capitals taught you to observe and delight in the structure of leaves, which made you wonder whether we learned to love real things through their representations or the other way around.

Mrs Lewes stood beside me. She remarked on the particular intricacy of the carving of the willow branches. Without looking at me she said, ‘You have a knife, shaped and carved like a willow leaf.' I was breathless. I did not answer. How did she know? Had Grandcourt told her? Was my every move surveilled and known to her as well as to him? Did she know of my temptation, my hatred?

‘You must love this place very much,' Juliet Fenn said to you. She had inquisitive eyes and was making notes. (Her father owned a cider works and was Member of Parliament for West Orchards.) ‘So many homes are alike, but yours is unique and you seem to know every cranny of it. I daresay you could never love another home as much.'

‘I carry it with me,' you said. ‘There's no disappointment in memory. And one's exaggerations are always on the good side.'

Your words seemed to relinquish the Abbey and acknowledge your loss and my unwanted triumph. They implied loneliness and severance from all that appeared to be yours but at root was not. I wondered about your mysterious foreign mother.

*

I was prevented from talking to you more. Sir Hugo showed us the portraits in the gallery above the cloisters: rows of Mallinger descendants – males from the female line and females from the male line painted by Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Romney; men in armour with pointed beards; ladies lost in hoops, ruffs and coiffeurs; men in black velvet and wigs; politicians in powdered perruques. Their resemblance to each other recurred in the family aquiline nose, the ladies' rosebud lips, the alabaster skin. I searched every one for likeness to you but could find no resemblance to your dark curls, dark eyes and light-brown skin.

At the tour's end Grandcourt went to the billiard room and I to the boudoir assigned me. I shut myself away and in despair looked at my image in the glass. In seven weeks my past life had been crushed and belief in my own power gone. My will was imperious but girlish. Grandcourt had rendered my body and spirit helpless and gained a mastery like that of a boa constrictor which goes on pinching and crushing without alarm at thunder. I dreaded hearing from him that, before our marriage, he already knew I had broken my promise to Mrs Glasher. Were that admitted aloud, his hold over me would be complete.

*

On New Year's Eve at the Abbey Sir Hugo and Lady Mallinger held a grand ball in the picture gallery above the cloisters. As a signal to you of our secret allegiance, I wanted to wear the turquoise necklace as my sole ornament. Knowing Grandcourt would not allow it I put on his hated diamonds, wound the turquoise three times round my wrist, then concealed it with the lace frill of my glove.

Half the gallery was to be used for dancing, the other for the huge supper table. The red carpet was down; hothouse plants and flowers filled every recess. Sir Hugo opened the ball dancing with me, Lady Pentreath danced with you, Lady Mallinger was obliged to dance with Grandcourt; it was hard not to see her as the mother who had produced nothing better than daughters and so let her husband's land and mansions slip into the pocket of this arrogant man.

To my surprise you then boldly asked if I wished to dance. Grandcourt was beside me, grumbling he was bored and wanted to leave. My hopes lifted: here was my chance to show you the necklace. I said I had danced enough but asked you to fetch me a glass of water. As you brought it I drew off my glove. You noticed the necklace. Grandcourt noticed you noticing. ‘What is that hideous thing you have on your wrist?' he asked.

With you there I was fearless. ‘It is an old necklace I like to wear,' I said, looking at you. ‘I lost it once and someone found it for me.' I drank the water and handed you the glass. When you returned you spoke of a fine view from the side windows of moonlight on the stone pillars. I said I should like to see it and asked Grandcourt if he wished to. ‘Deronda will take you,' he said and walked away.

You offered your arm; I felt proud to hold it. I looked out at the moon, the light and shadows, and they too soothed me. I felt I must talk to you but that I had so little time. You knew I was unhappy, needed you and could not speak directly. ‘Suppose I had gambled again, and lost the necklace again, what would you have thought of me?' I asked.

‘Worse than I do now,' you said.

I whispered I had done much worse, a great deal worse, and because of this felt wrong, miserable and deserving of the punishment that had come. I asked you what I should do, what you would do. I wanted to tell you what was happening to me but I could not utter the words. You were so honest and pure-minded. You did not encourage me to be candid. I could not tell you I was nightly ravaged by a man whom I had voluntarily married, that I asked him not to come to my bed but that made him more vicious, that I wanted to kill him and feared I would do so. You said pure thoughts and good habits helped us bear inevitable sorrow and that wrongdoing could not be amended by one thing only. I wanted to say, Yes, that is all very well, but help me, please.

‘Why,' I asked, ‘did you make me doubt what I was doing and stop me gambling at the Kursaal? I might have won again. Why shouldn't I do as I like and not mind? Other people do.'

‘I don't believe you would ever get not to mind,' you said. ‘I don't believe you could ever lead an injurious life without feeling remorse. If it were true that baseness and cruelty made some escape from pain, what difference would that make to you if you can't be quite base or cruel?'

‘Tell me what better I can do,' I pleaded to you, knowing I must return to my gaoler.

‘Many things. Look on other lives besides your own. See what their troubles are and how they are borne. Try to care for something in this vast world besides the gratification of small selfish desires. Try to care for what is best in thought and action. Something that is good, apart from the accidents of your own lot.'

*

Your words scored into my thinking as much as Lydia Glasher's curse. They gave me hope that even though I was trapped my better self might set me free. I was the chattel of an evil man who intended to tame me, bring me to heel, make me respond to the rein, but he could not take my resistance from me, he knew nothing of my soul. It was not that I thought I might become a missionary, suffragist, nun or teacher, but rather that were I to find a path to freedom I would go down it and were I to find a place of kindness and courage I might live again. My sorrow was I wanted that place to be you.

You returned me to Grandcourt. We passed Mrs Lewes, who looked intently at us. I told my wretched husband I was ready to go, I asked you to excuse us to Lady Mallinger, then thanked you and we left.

*

Unpleasantness, I knew, would follow. Grandcourt came to my boudoir, sprawled in a chair and said, ‘Sit down.' I sat. ‘Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad woman in a play,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I suppose there is some understanding between you and Deronda about that thing on your wrist. If you have anything to say to him, say it, but don't carry on a telegraphing which other people are supposed not to see. It's damnably vulgar.'

‘You can know all about the necklace,' I said, pride overcoming my fear.

‘I don't want to know. Keep to yourself what you like. What I care to know I shall know without your telling me. Only you will please to behave as becomes my wife and not make a spectacle of yourself.'

It gave him no discomfort to chide me in this way. After our marriage he only ever addressed me by way of command and punishment.

‘Do you object to my talking to Mr Deronda?' I asked.

‘I don't care two straws about him or any other conceited hanger-on. You may talk to him as much as you like. But you are my wife and you will either fill your place properly – to the world and to me – or you will go to the devil.'

‘I never intended anything but to fill my place properly,' I said. I did not say that in taking my place with him I had gone to the devil and beyond.

‘You put that thing on your wrist and hid it from me till you wanted him to see it. You will understand that you are not to compromise yourself. Behave with dignity. That's all I have to say.'

He stood with his back to the fire and looked at me with derision. It was futile for me to try to explain, counterproductive to argue, or show emotion. There was much I might have said about compromise and dignity. Grandcourt pursued argument only to regard subduing me as winning it. He was not jealous but contemptuous and vicious. He would punish every independent move I made, I would do as he said, endure all he did, or be damned. I was his wife.

‘Please leave me to myself tonight,' I whispered. He left the room and returned within an hour.

*

Misery fed my defiance. Next day I determined to make use of Grandcourt's scornful permission for me to talk to you. I encountered you in the drawing room at teatime. You were in conversation with Mrs Lewes, whom I again thought ugly, with her jutting chin and big nose. I approached. ‘Mrs Grandcourt,' she said, and I was discomfited by her appraisal of me with her thoughtful blue eyes. I feared she was critical and considered me shallow because I cared about my appearance and was young and not learned. I told her I had enjoyed
Silas Marner
and wished that I, like Eppie, had had a loving adoptive father such as Silas. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘It was a pity you were so young when your father died, and that Captain Davilow proved unsatisfactory.'

How strange I again felt. I could not fathom how she knew about my father and Davilow, or who in the room might have told her of them. She seemed to scrutinise you, too, as if to measure the effect of my presence on you.

I attempted with scant success to follow your conversation. The topic was synagogues and Jewish customs and how you both were studying Hebrew with Immanuel Deutsch. From her bag Mrs Lewes gave you a list of eighteen books about the Jews and their history which she thought would interest you. I could only ponder why.

I gathered she was working on a novel in which she hoped to overcome English attitudes of narrow-minded arrogance towards the Jews. You mentioned Mirah Lapidoth, ‘a little Jewess' known to you both. Mrs Lewes had invited her to dinner to hear her sing Hebrew hymns. Miss Lapidoth, she said, was equally accomplished singing in Italian or German. Herr Klesmer had called at the house where she lodged, and been impressed by her rendition of Leopardi's ‘Ode to Italy' and Faust's songs to Gretchen. So taken were you with Miss Lapidoth's enchanting voice you suggested Lady Pentreath and Lady Mallinger arrange singing lessons with her for their daughters, or hire her for private concerts. Were I to hear her, you assured me, I might revoke my resolution to give up singing. It would more likely confirm it, I said, for I would plainly see my own middlingness. On the contrary, you said, she would inspire me to try.

Your praise of Miss Lapidoth's talent made me jealous. None the less, since you so admired her, I decided I should like to hear her and have lessons from her when in town. ‘I mean lessons in rejoicing at her excellence and my own deficiency,' I could not resist saying.